Planetside Software Forums

Title: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: kaedorg on July 20, 2015, 04:09:40 PM

Here it is guys.I will try to explain why and how I create this animation.First of all, I would not consider it as an artistic performance.For 2 reasons : first I took very few hours on scene and second everything have been made to reduce render time.Ok birth of the project : it was a simple discussion with a friend who showed me on Youtubea timelapse. And then he asked me if I would be able to simulate a Timelapse with Terragen.This question was the big bang instant of this project.I thought the idea was very interesting because the animations usually seem to be in a world wheretime is frozen.Here it would be the opposite. Just not moving and let's watch the time pass by.

The idea was to make something realistic. So I would animate the sun (in order to simulate the earth rotation around the sun).For something realistic, i found a very useful website :http://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php

This website gives you the position of the Sun for any place in the world for any time.

I choose Douarnenez (the place where I live and the date of 21st of March – spring day).I got an excel file which gave the sun position every 10 minutes from Dawn to Sunset.

I thought a 1 minute Timelapse would be fine.With FPS at 25, it was a 1500 frames project.From Dawn to Sunset, i had to find the interval then, it appeared that 30 seconds would be perfect also for calculations.As i said, I got the position of the sun every 10 minutes, so it means every 20 frames.It is not difficult to find an average position for each frame.If Position B = Position A+ 10 minutes, then you have to make a formula likePosition A + 30 seconds = Position A + ((Position B – Position A)/20)Position A + 1 minutes = Position A + (2 x ((Position B – Position A)/20))and so on.. At the end, I got an excel file with the sun Position for every frame (the calculation for each interval of 30 seconds is not completely correct but it is a good average).

The second thing to animate was the render camera.I decided that the sun would be on the left of the 1st frame and would be on the right of the last frame.So the heading of the sun must 25 degrees less than rotation Y of the render camera in frame 1and 25 degrees more than rotation Y of the render camera in last frame.It appeared that rotation of the camera should be about 131 degrees from frame 1 to last one.Again a similar formula give the Y rotation at each frame.So I had another excel for the camera rotation.

Last thing to animate was the clouds. Same process with a calculation of a realistic speed for the clouds.And again several excel files.

Then all these excel numbers must be convert in readable lines by Terragen 3.Some functions did that.When I mean readable by Terragen 3, it is because Terragen 3 can be opened with the Notepad software.Then it is just some copy + paste operations

The project was in HD 1920 x 1080.The problem was to keep a quality with a render time as short as possible.Because of the nearly 1500 frames.To give you an idea of the challenge 10 minutes of render for a frame means more than 10 days for the project.So render time has been tested to be reduced as much as possible.Of course, I forgot to say that I didn't want to use a render farm but only one of my rendering computer.

Artistically, it could have been improved. Flowers are too red for my taste.Water was not possible here.I see it more as a technical project using only Terragen 3 (except excel files) and not using a third-party software for animation.

Also I don't know at all the video software, there is not additional view or music.

Thanks for spending time to read my longest post on this forum.Sorry if all the explanations are not very clear. We'll make that on the non-mother langage effect.

Link to the video : www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdHKkewL2-M (I would advice you to watch it on Youtube website to get the better resolution HD)

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: Kadri on July 21, 2015, 10:58:37 PM

I like the clouds and the beginning most.

A little parallax would be nice. Your camera move-rotation is as you used a real camera in a special position where the lens was the absolute rotating center.A small parallax would be more interesting probably.Or a small side etc. move.

Is there any directional move in the clouds like wind? It didn't looked so to me.But they evolve very nicely.

Still animating in Terragen is hard-time consuming and it is a nice effort :)

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: kaedorg on July 22, 2015, 03:30:58 AM

@Kadri

As in reality Dawn and Sunset seems to be the most interesting.I agree with you that the beginning is the better part with changes of colours and luminosity.

All cloud layers have a directionnal move. If I remember well, it a 5 km per hour move.

David

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: Kadri on July 22, 2015, 03:33:01 AM

Thanks David.

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: Hannes on July 22, 2015, 04:37:08 AM

Looks fantastic!! The icing on the cake would be if the plants would "tremble" as you can see in most time lapse clips.

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: Dune on July 22, 2015, 06:37:48 AM

The latter would be possible if you repop every frame and add a small PF for the veggies to sit on, which is animated.

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: kaedorg on July 22, 2015, 07:17:25 AM

I love these discussions.Kind of brainstorming that gives ideas for new projects.

Ulco, what do you mean by small PF ? Any example ?

David

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: Dune on July 22, 2015, 05:46:30 PM

If you add a pf with say 0.01/0.01/0.01 and 0.01 displacement (and animate the displacement or the seed) and have the pops sit on that, they will sit just a little different every frame (1cm up, 1 down...). But perhaps better would be to use the mesh displacer and animate that. It's just theory, mind you, never really tested this.I have asked whether it would be possible to just use the normal of the extra PF displacement, and not the height, so you could have the pop sit on one level, but have the rotation set to the new (animated) normals of the extra PF. But that may be future....

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: Oshyan on July 23, 2015, 11:27:18 PM

This is actually quite nice! I especially liked the movement of the cloud shadows across the landscape. Somehow the earlier cloud "evolution" looked a bit odd to me without more horizontal movement, but technically it can probably be realistic this way, just not quite as I expected. Indeed some movement of the vegetation would be a very nice enhancement, and since it's timelapse you could actually use the mesh displacer to do it very easily; normally it's tough to get a good setting of displacement where the vegetation moves naturally and doesn't "jitter" too fast, but since that kind of fast, almost vibrating motion is what you see in timelapses, it should be easy to achieve.

I also think some work on tonemapping (HDR) would be awesome, but I know that's a lot more to deal with in post processing. It could really bring out detail in the shadows when the sun goes behind clouds, sort of like an auto-exposure adjust, so it would be a nice effect I think. But again more work...

Overall a great video and one we'll be happy to share with a wider audience on social media (assuming you don't mind :D). :)

- Oshyan

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: kaedorg on July 24, 2015, 04:33:37 AM

@OshyanThanks and feel free to share the video.

David

Title: Re: TFDTS is a Timelapse From Dawn To Sunset
Post by: DocCharly65 on July 24, 2015, 07:33:21 AM